Pages in the World Wide Web (Web) are typically written in hyper text markup language (HTML). Server-side logic controlling navigation and performing data access and other server-side functionality is typically written in a procedural or object-oriented programming language to tie pages together, forming a web application. These web pages are stored on servers connected through the Internet. Each web page is associated with a uniform resource locator (URL) and a user/client can browse to a particular web page by requesting the web page from a server using the URL corresponding to the web page.
Web applications are increasingly being used to interact with users in a web-based environment. These web applications may include many different types of scenarios, such as login and logout operations, e-commerce, help wizards, and the like. To interact with users for a particular scenario, a web application typically has to include multiple web pages to present information to and receive input from the users. Web developers typically have to carefully design web pages and server-side procedural logic for a web application to manage the navigation of the pages through a scenario. Specifically, a web developer must incorporate multiple navigational controls in each web page and add server-side procedural logic to ensure that the navigational controls in all of the web pages allow a user to correctly navigate through the scenario. If web pages with dynamic content are used, the developer must also include server-side logic to accurately track and respond to the user-driven navigation flow through these dynamically changing pages. Web pages developed in this labor-intensive manner are expensive and error prone.
Thus, there is a need for an efficient web development technique for defining navigational flow in a scenario without the need to write procedural server-side navigational logic in each web page and to track the navigation flow through the web pages.